Daley's 'greatest hits'

Former Mayor Richard Daley, sitting next to current Mayor Rahm Emanuel, at an event in January. (Heather Charles, Chicago Tribune)

Of all the nuggets ofRichard M. Daley's wit and wisdom that veteran WLS-AM 890 political reporter Bill Cameron unearthed in a recent search of his audio vault, my favorite is this:

"What really makes narcotics so lucrative is the money."

That sparkling tautology appears about three minutes into "Mayor Daley's Greatest Hits," a half-hour documentary Cameron produced in honor of Hizzoner's 70th birthday this week.

It features many of the classics, such as the former mayor's exasperated rant at the media:

"Scrutiny? What else do you want? Do you want to take my shorts? Give me a break. How much scrutiny do you want to have? You go scrutinize yourself! I get scrootened every day, don't worry, from each and every one of you. It doesn't bother me."

Also, that very strange moment when Daley responded to a reporter's question about the effectiveness of gun control in Chicago by holding up a bayoneted rifle and saying, "If I put this up your butt, you'll find out how effective it is."

But much of the "Greatest Hits" material is unfamiliar — obscure, odd locutions that caught Cameron's ear over his nearly 30 years of covering a man who was part Yogi Berra, part Mrs. Malaprop and part the Rev. W.A. Spooner:

"We have an agreement to cyst and decease."

"I am very fortunate to have a corporate community to step on."

"The true terrorists in America today are the drug king pings."

"We place (journalists) on a platitude much higher than us."

"Our plan is financially conservative, reasonable and feasonable."

"We're putting money in the skin with our economic stimulus package."

The most famous quote from Daley's father, formerMayor Richard J. Daley, was, "The policeman isn't there to create disorder; he's there to preserve disorder." And Cameron shows that Richard M. inherited the tendency to say the opposite of what he meant:

"Everyone's for corruption, both in the private and public section."

"There are no excuses for children to learn."

About the Hired Truck scandal: "I'm not afraid to run away from it."

Cameron has been covering politics on local radio since 1969 and has squirreled away interesting sound bites — first on cassette, then on digital minidisc, lately on his computer hard drive — both for laughs and for catching pols contradicting themselves.

He aired the first half of "Mayor Daley's Greatest Hits" on Sunday on his weekly 6 a.m. program "Connected to Chicago" (I'm a regular, unpaid panelist on the show) and will air the second half next Sunday. I've posted a link to Part 1 at chicagotribune.com/zorn.

It will remind you of Daley at his babbling best:

"We have a lot of alternatives, a lot of alternatives. One thing you do, you have a lot of alternatives. And you look at a lot of alternatives. There's A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P."

"Our whole skyline, it isn't artificial. It's like a child being born, a woman going through pregnancy and then have a child and allow a child to grow. The Chicago skyline just grew naturally. It wasn't artificial. It wasn't just stuck in there and put in there in a way that's artificial."

What really makes this documentary so funny is the humor.

But it will also remind you of Daley's passion. "Greatest Hits" is more than just a blooper reel of references to "Uptown Sinclair" and "aldermanic perogatory."

Cameron has included a portion of the 1992 news conference in which a sobbing Daley reacted to the involvement of his son Patrick, then 16, in an ugly brawl during an illicit party at the Daleys' vacation home in Grand Beach, Mich. Also a thunderous attack on those trying to block Wal-Mart from opening in the city's poorest neighborhoods, a pointed complaint that we've become "a country of whiners" and several cries from the heart about gun violence.

You'll want to download and save this program. It's likely to become, to use a Daley-ism, a "hair-loom."